Patrick Devlieger

Patrick Devlieger is associate professor of social and cultural anthropology at KU Leuven, and a guest professor at University of Illinois at Chicago, Stellenbosch University, University of Alberta, and Yunnan University. He teaches anthropological theory, visual anthropology, fieldwork, and culture and disability. His regional focus has been in African rural and urban societies, United States (small town, Chicago, and Hawaii), European minorities (Brussels and Antwerp), and recently in China’s Yunnan Province. In 2014 he became the manager of the Damien Fund at KU Leuven, which focuses on disability, heritage, and innovation.

Relevant publications include the following: Disability and Technology in Africa (forthcoming), Rethinking Disability: World Perspectives in Culture and Society (2016), Reversing the (im)material Sense of a Non-place: The Impact of Blindness on the Brussels Metro (2012), Handicap et Société Africaine (2011), Leuven Horen en Voelen [To Feel and Hear Leuven] (2007), Blindness and the Multi-sensorial City (2006), Rethinking Disability: Emergent Concepts, Definitions, and Communities (2003), and several documentary films including The Disabling Bullet (1989) that has recently been updated (2016). Devlieger and his wife Martine live in beautiful Oud-Heverlee (Belgium).